Our 2019 dates: Aug. 31, Sept. 5, 7, 8 and 12
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- New hours: Open 24 hours on weekends
- Free handicapping tourney features Oaklawn
- We're the place to be for Pegasus simulcast
- Next Shares in $7 million Pegasus Turf
- Join us for Super Bowl (and TV giveaway)
- Doctor Mounty upsets Heart to Heart
- UofL honors Old Friends' Michael Blowen
- Float your boat! Cruise into Spring promo
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New hours: Open 24 hours on weekends
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We are now open 24 hours a day through the weekend for our historical horse racing gaming, going non-stop from 9 a.m. Friday through 3 a.m. Monday. Kentucky Downs opens at 9 a.m. CT on weekdays, closing at 3 the morning following Mondays through Thursdays.
New bar hours: 9 a.m.-2 a.m. Sunday-Thursday; 9 a.m.-4 a.m. Friday-Saturday. Lucky 7s Diner: 9 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-midnight Friday, 6 a.m.-midnight Saturday and 6 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday. KD Cafe hours: 6 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.
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Enjoy Oaklawn's Friday opener by playing
in our free weekly handicapping tournament
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Every week we offer a
free handicapping tournament
offering $250 in prize money, including $125 to the winner. This Friday (Jan. 25) we celebrate the
opening of Oaklawn Park
's 2019 meet, offering some of the best purses and largest fields in the country. Participants in this week's tournament will receive a
free program for Saturday's Gulfstream Park's Pegasus World Cup card.
Join us in Kentucky Downs' second-floor simulcast hall with nearly 50 widescreen televisions.
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We're place to be for Pegasus simulcast
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Gulfstream Park's Jan. 26 Pegasus World Cup program offers the richest race day in America outside the Breeders' Cup. Come enjoy the 12-race, nine-stakes card that culminates in the $9 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational and the inaugural $7 million Pegasus Turf from the convenience of our second-floor simulcast area or our first-floor lounge.
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More than $2.5 million paid out in jackpots each month!
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Old Friends victor Next Shares in $7M Pegasus Turf
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(Next Shares earned his first stakes victory in Kentucky Downs' 2018 Old Friends Stakes under Drayden Van Dyke. Tyler Gaffalione will be aboard for the $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf. Grace Clark photo)
Next Shares heads into Saturday’s $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational off of a 3-for-4 win streak that started in Kentucky Downs’ Old Friends Stakes.
The 6-year-old gelding drew post 5 and is 15-1 in the program odds for the Pegasus Turf, America's richest grass race being run for the first time at Gulfstream Park. Tyler Gaffalione, the rising star who has become a Kentucky Downs mainstay and won Churchill Downs' fall meet riding title, has the mount.
Bought at Keeneland’s 2017 November sale for $190,000, Next Shares was running well — including a second and third in Grade 1 races in California — but was 0 for 7 for his new owners until trainer Richard Baltas shipping the gelding to Kentucky Downs for the $250,000 Old Friends. He won by 1 3/4 lengths, then a month later dominated Keeneland’s Grade 1, $1 million Shadwell Turf Mile at 23-1 odds. While tripped up in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Mile -- he finished 13th but only a total of six lengths behind victorious Expert Eye -- Next Shares began his 6-year-old season with a rallying nose victory in Santa Anita’s Grade 2 San Gabriel at nine furlongs Jan. 5 as a prep for the 1 3/16-mile Pegasus Turf.
“The horse just got good,” said the California-based Baltas. “He’s putting a good series of races together. He’s happy. Obviously he won the Kentucky Downs race, then he won the Grade 1, the Shadwell Mile pretty easily. We were unfortunate in the Breeders’ Cup, I thought, because of the rains. it was really rainy and he had the inside post. He got stuck behind horses and was kind of spinning his wheels - and it was a pretty good horse that won the race. He won the other day here, ran a very big number going against a slow pace. I’m pretty happy with the way the horse is developing. He just keeps getting better.”
Next Shares has brought Michael Iavarone, best known as co-principle in the IEAH Stables that won the 2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness with Big Brown, back into the racing limelight. Iavarone had been out of the horse business for five years after IEAH’s implosion and was dabbling into re-entry when he saw Next Shares close from well back to finish second in a $100,000 stakes over Santa Anita’s downhill turf course on Jan. 1.
“He hadn’t run in a while, and I saw he’d changed ownership and trainers,” Iavarone said of Next Shares,” Iavarone said. “I knew the horse that won was a really good horse and made to go 6 1/2. This horse is kind of a big heavy horse. He closed just unbelievably fast, ran some really fast fractions. I said ‘Wow, this horse is really eager. I think if they can get this horse to go a little more ground that they’ve got something.’”
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Super Bowl! Super giveaway! Super time!
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We have the region's biggest Super Bowl shindig, with our The Big Game promotion Sunday, Feb. 3. Watch the Los Angeles Rams take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII from Atlanta on televisions throughout the facility, enjoy food and drink specials as well as betting horses or playing our historical horse racing gaming terminals. Live music begins in our lounge at 7 p.m. CT.
We'll give away
two 50-inch smart televisions, with the Super Bowl outcome playing a role.
All Players Club members receive an entry into the TV drawings -- choosing which drawing drum their entry goes in based on what team they’re cheering on to win. At the end of the game, two names will be pulled from the drawing drum that correlates with the winning team.
A targeted group of Players Club members will receive an email with bonus entries for the drawings. Also on tap: Our Sunday specials with $6 pitchers and $8 buckets of beer featuring Bud, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Miller Lite and Coors Light.
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Doctor Mounty upsets Heart to Heart in G3
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Photo: Doctor Mounty winning Gulfstream Park's $100,000 Tropical Park Turf under Javier Castellano. Leslie Martin/Coglianese Photography
Kentucky Downs' $250,000 Old Friends and One Dreamer are for for horses that haven't won a stakes on the year. But they've both proven to have enjoyed very tough fields, producing a stream of horses that went on to win graded stakes.
Among them: Doctor Mounty, seventh in the Old Friends, rallied from last on Jan. 12 to take Gulfstream Park's $100,000, Grade 3 Tropical Turf by a length over Your Only Man under Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano. Heavy favorite Heart to Heart, a multiple Grade 1 winner, finished a nose back in third after throwing his head in the air at the start and failing to fill the pacesetter's role that has proven a key to his success.
Trained by Hall of Famer Shug McGaughey, Doctor Mounty won Laurel's Baltimore-Washington International Turf Cup Stakes for his first graded win in his next start after the Old Friends. He won his second in the Tropical Turf.
“I had a great, great trip. That’s what I was looking for today,” Castellano said. “He broke well out of the gate, but he’s a come-from-behind horse. I said, ‘Let’s take advantage of all the speed in the race.’ The way the race unfolded worked out great for my horse. I sat behind horses and made one run.”
Larry Pratt and Dave Alden’s Doctor Mounty ran a mile over a firm turf course in 1:34.62 to win for the seventh time in 14 career starts.
“His last race [in the Fort Lauderdale], he didn’t run that bad. It was just too tough. He was 70-1. Today, he’s 5-1. He only got beat eight lengths and there were five Grade 1 winners in the race,” McGaughey said afterward. “I’ve been a little bit puzzled about how far he wants to run. Today, the big thing was to get him relaxed. Javier got him to relax and when he get that, he finishes up like he did today.”
McGaughey said Doctor Mounty is likely to run next at Gulfstream in either the Canadian Turf (G3) March 2 or the Appleton (G3) March 29.
Also Jan. 12 at Gulfstream, #KyDownsGrad I'm Betty G was a game second in the Grade 3 Marshua's River.
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Featured February milkshake:
Peanut
B
utter - Yum!
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UofL honors Old Friends founder Michael Blowen
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(Photo: Michael Blowen giving the first tour ever at Old Friends at Kentucky Downs in the summer of 2015. Rick Albright photo)
Kentucky Downs, operated in conjunction with Simpson County Tourism Commission, houses the
Old Friends at Kentucky Downs satellite facility
- the first equine retirement home located at a racetrack in the country. (Tours are available most days from 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. CT. Email
[email protected] or call
270-253-2210 for more information.) Kentucky Downs stages the $250,000 Old Friends Stakes, which traditionally is held on the first Thursday of the meet as a fund-raiser for the aftercare facility.
Blowen, a retired Boston Globe movie critic and arts journalist, established Old Friends in 2003 and, ironically, the first big name Thoroughbred entrusted to his care was Sunshine Forever, who had been owned and beloved by Galbreath.
A facility devoted solely to retired Thoroughbreds without bells and whistles to interest tourists “was an unproven idea … and skeptics predicted it wouldn’t work,” said attorney Milton C. Toby in his nomination letter for Blowen. “They were wrong.”
“I am flabbergasted,” Blowen said, “especially when I think that John Galbreath’s own Sunshine Forever helped me build a foundation for success. I had a simple idea and I was always surprised someone else hadn’t done it before me. This award reinforces our belief at Old Friends that aftercare is an important part of racing.”
The Galbreath Award has been given annually since 1990 to honor entrepreneurial leadership that has had a significant and positive impact on the equine industry. Galbreath was the visionary owner of Darby Dan Farm in Lexington and a former Churchill Downs chairman who distinguished himself as both a businessman and a horseman.
Old Friends, which is unique in that it accepts stallions, has grown from a leased paddock and one horse to a 236-acre farm, a herd of over 200 rescued and retired horses in the main Georgetown, Ky., facility. There also is a satellite operation outside of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
“Michael Blowen represents everything the Galbreath Award celebrates,” said Sean Beirne, director of the equine program. “He saw an opportunity to showcase Thoroughbreds in their twilight years and let them continue to thrill their fans in a unique way. UofL is proud to acknowledge his achievements.”
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Grace Clark's Kentucky Downs
Our amazing collegian and racing social-media coordinator was on the scene for Jan. 20 snow, her photos including triple graded-stakes winner Ball Four at Old Friends at Kentucky Downs.
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Snow kidding! Time to Cruise into Spring!
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Spring is right around the corner, and if that wasn't enough reason to be excited, February is our Cruise into Spring Giveaway! Club members get a free entry into the drawings on Feb. 23 to win cash or a cruise! Drawings take place 7 p.m.-10 p.m. CT.
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These are good Hot Seats to be on! Players Club members playing with their Club card from 1 p.m.-10 p.m. CT on Wednesdays Feb. 6, 13 and 20 can win instant free play and bonus entries into our Cruise into Spring Giveaway.
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Play with your Club card Tuesdays in February from 3 p.m.-9 p.m. and you could be selected to play Tic-Tac-Toe for $100 free play. If you lose or tie, you still receive $25 free play.
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Cupid and Lady Luck are teaming up. Fridays from 1 p.m.-10 p.m. to select guests who are playing with their Club cards to step inside Cupid's Cash Cube to grab as much cash as they can!
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Earn 2X the points from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays in February. Stop into Lucky 7s for our $5.99 Early Bird special: two eggs, two bacon slices, two pancakes and two biscuits and gravy.
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Follow our #KyDownsGrads
on social media
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Want to get all the Kentucky Downs news? Email [email protected] to get Kentucky Downs content delivered straight into your inbox
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KENTUCKY DOWNS
kentuckydowns.com/racing
270.586.7778
5629 Nashville Road, Franklin, Ky. 42134
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Kentucky Downs' five-date meet is the most unique in America, offering record purses, the largest fields and low takeout to be ranked the No. 1 betting product by Horseplayers Association of North America. We are open year-round, seven days a week for simulcasting and historical horse racing, which we are proud to use as a means for bettering the entire Kentucky racing circuit.
Newsletter edited by publicity director Jennie Rees.
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